Beyond Reality discussion

My 2019 reading goal was to read 70 books. This year I blew that goal out of the water, reading 107 books! My average rating on a 10 point scale was 7.63.

13 books earned a rating of 10: The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness, Daughter of Ancients by Carol Berg, Fool's Fate and Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb, Becoming by Michelle Obama, Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey, About the Night by Anat Talshir,Tides of Darkness by Judith Tarr, Dreaming the Hound and Dreaming the Serpent Spear by Manda Scott, An Autumn War and The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham, and Traitor's Moon by Lynn Flewelling.

Another 17 books earned a rating of 9.

My lowest ranking this year was a 3, earned by Lighthouses, a non-fiction book by F. Ross Holland. It had gorgeous photos but no maps and not enough info on locations (Google Maps was my constant companion while reading this). It was truly just a minimal overview of lighthouses in Ireland, the UK, the US, and Canada. But the photos are beautiful!

Another five books earned a rating of 5. 

Fantasy, science fiction, and mysteries/thrillers comprised most of my reading last year. I would expect that to continue. I did branch out into audiobooks and will likely continue to listen while I walk.

I don't do reading goals and, to me, it makes it feel like work or a task, not something I do for enjoyment. :)

I managed a sad 46 books this year. I blame it primarily on year 3 (or is it 4) of a long series of family emergencies which sucked in my time like a black hole and destroyed my ability to concentrate on much of anything. Add in work turning into one emergency after another after another, and its amazing I got anything done. Yeesh.

My average rating for the year was 3.7 (5 star rating system).

Two 5 stars
Recursion by Blake Crouch
The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay
Its not often you finish a book and just sit there saying wow periodically. I got two this year, which was nice. :)

Both authors have jumped into my pay attention to anything they write list. In fact I've already started grabbing books by Paul Tremblay.

There were also a number of excellent 4 star books this year.
The Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.
Scalzi's The Consuming Fire and Head On
The Bobiverse Series by Dennis E Taylor.
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
Just to name a few

The stinker of the year award goes to Mira Grant for Into the Drowning Deep. Depressingly ruined potential.

Next year I'm intending to add in more non fiction. I've been sitting on some for years and I recently picked up a number that look like they have potential. Actually Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime is next month's book of the month for another group and I'm looking forward to it.

I've also been wanting to jump in more with horror. I have a weird love hate relationship with that subgenre.

Kathi, I've been sitting on a few series by Carol Berg for absolutely ages, Bridge D'Arnath series being one. What's your opinion of them?

I'm another who doesn't do reading goals, but I do like to see how my reading trends. Being a nerdy sort, I export my reads each year & massage them in an Excel sheet to see how the year has gone in my own categories, which can be seen in the pic below.



My 3 star & above ratings have held pretty steady around 80% - great reading. Kudos to the GR community & my GR friends for steering me right. Thanks to audiobooks, the number I read each year has generally increased, although it seems I slacked off a bit this year from last. I almost doubled my books in 2013-14 due to audiobooks, though. The numbers above are a little iffy, usually off by a few between what GR stats & the export says I have. Some are short stories, so that bumps the number up.

2009 - 147 books read
2010 - 117 books read
2011 - 125 books read
2012 - 130 books read
2013 - 220 books read
2014 - 212 books read
2015 - 241 books read
2016 - 230 books read
2017 - 259 books read
2018 - 312 books read
2019 - 264 books read

In 2018, I began to realize I was reading too much without leaving enough time for thinking, so have tried to add in more of that. I didn't read as many short stories, so the number of books is down, but still a fairly ridiculous amount. I'm definitely reading more nonfiction thanks to audiobooks. I'm happy about that. I'm finding they're of more interest. So many of the fiction genres have become stale for me - 'been there, done that' kind of thing.

Random wrote: "I Kathi, I've been sitting on a few series by Carol Berg for absolutely ages, Bridge D'Arnath series being one. What's your opinion of them?"

I have read both her Rai-Kirah and her Bridge of D’Arnath series, and I rated them all 4 or 5 stars on Goodreads except one 3 star. Both excellent, although I think I liked Rai-Kirah a tiny bit better. I have her Lighthouse duology and 2 books of her Collegia Magica unread on my shelf as well. Still have to pickup the 3rd... I think her books are excellent and quite creative!

Edited to add that she wrote 2 more books in the Lighthouse series, now call the Sanctuary books, so I order them as well as the 3rd in the Collegia Magica series. Happy New Year to me!

Kathi wrote: "Random wrote: "I Kathi, I've been sitting on a few series by Carol Berg for absolutely ages, Bridge D'Arnath series being one. What's your opinion of them?"

I have read both her Rai-Kirah and her ..."

I have so far read her Lighthouse Duology (I had just learned about the two 2 books), Song of the Beast, and the Rai-Kirah series. I've got Bridge D'Arnath series and also the first two books in Collegia Magica series, I think the 3rd book in that series wasn't available yet when I went on that Carol berg buying spree.

And people always look at me so surprised when I tell them I would have no problems filling my days if I could retire 15-20 years early. Money, of the other hand, could be a problem. :)

I estimate I currently own hundreds of books that I haven't yet had the time to read, there are many many more out there that I want to read but haven't bought, and more and more seem to keep coming every day. And these last couple of years I have discovered a number of exciting new (at least to me) authors.

Fool's AssassinI loved the Rai-Kirah series! I haven't read any of her other books yet, but I intend to someday.

I read 68 books total in 2019, which is almost twice what I read last year, and pretty close to my usual pre-kid totals. It feels good to be back in the groove of regular reading again, because it's been a few years!

Here are my favorite reads of 2019:
The Power by Naomi Alderman
the entire second half of the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Children of Time and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey
The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater
Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller
Circe by Madeline Miller
How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children by Wendy Mogel
Educated by Tara Westover
Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb

Honorable mention goes to reading the entire Harry Potter series out loud to my 8 year old - I hadn't read them in years and it was SO much fun revisiting the magic of Hogwarts through fresh eyes!

I wanted to start my list of 5star reads from last year ... but those were so many that I would clutter this thread ^^'. I had a very fortunate reading year.

Gabi wrote: "I wanted to start my list of 5star reads from last year ... but those were so many that I would clutter this thread ^^'. I had a very fortunate reading year."

I had more that I listed as 5 stars, but these were my favorites :) Also, not all of these were 5 stars - I have some favorites that are not necessarily 5-star quality but rank high on entertainment value!

Jim wrote: "I'm another who doesn't do reading goals, but I do like to see how my reading trends. Being a nerdy sort, I export my reads each year & massage them in an Excel sheet to see how the year has gone i..."

Wow, that’s a lot of books! And so many audio books! I find audio books take me longer to “read” than if I were reading a print or ebook version, probably because I sometimes skim (more than I probably should) and the reader/narrator reads every single word.

Both you and Random mentioned adding more nonfiction books. That likely won’t happen for me—I read mostly for enjoyment, so the few nonfiction things I pick up still have to be highly readable and entertaining.

Now granted, the non fiction subjects I am reading are things I enjoy, so they are still enjoyment reads. :)

My second favorite thing about audiobooks is that they can't be rushed through. So much of my life is rush rush rush from one emergency to the next. Its nice to just simply slow down and enjoy something.

Well ok, you can speed up the playback. I did that once. I lasted for about 20 minutes before screaming, TAKE A BREATH! and going back to normal speed. :)


I describe it like the difference between eating McDonalds in the car between appointments as compared to sitting down a good home made meal with good friends and good conversation. The first is quicker, and means you can squeeze more into your day, but the second is way more enjoyable and better for you.

Slowing down also allows me to really think about what I have read beyond first impressions.

Funny, and partially related. With Season 2 of Lost in Space now available, my husband tried again to get to me watch the show. But I just can't. One major emergency after another, boom, boom, boom. I just can't stand it. Its too much like work. :D

Kathi wrote: "Wow, that’s a lot of books! And so many audio books! I find audio books take me longer to “read” than if..."

I usually listen at 1.5x speed, but I'm a fairly fast print reader, too. Also, especially with nonfiction books, I've found that getting the ebook & skimming it really helps me remember the information. Nonfiction is fun for me, but perhaps you haven't seen some of the titles I read. Right now I'm reading Talking to Robots: Tales from Our Human-Robot Futures which is a hoot.

Some of those I read last year:
Wild Sex: The Science Behind Mating in the Animal Kingdom
Does It Fart?: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence
Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History

Tell me fiction can be any more entertaining!
;)

In 2019, I read 73 books, which is also more like a pre-kid year (I totally understand, Shel!)

20 of those were middle grade or kids' graphic novels that I read with or shortly after my oldest kidlet. I recommend the graphic novel series Amulet (The Stonekeeper) and Five Worlds (The Sand Warrior) for fantasy fans at any age.

I had 16 five star reads, which is more this year than I've had in any year since I created my Goodreads account a decade ago (!). I only re-read 3 books, which let me make a huge dent in my TBR stacks at home (I'm down to 8 unread, lingering books! 8!). I also managed to read 11 non-fiction books, which is unusually high for me.

Highlights of the year included:
-The Alcatraz vs. The Evil Librarians series, Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, and Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
-The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden (2 of my 5 star reads)
-The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemison (3 of my 5 star reads... I seriously don't think I've ever read a trilogy with more consistent quality.)
-Books 2-4 of the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks... 600 pages into the finale!
-The Outskirter's Secret by Rosemary Kirstein. (I am slow rolling this series as they are published so infrequently. I have no idea why she hasn't gotten more traction, these are some of the tightest writing I've ever seen.)
-Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, which is a 5 star, must read for anyone in America. Movie comes out later this month.
-and a whole bunch of Green Arrow comics, mostly from the Mike Grell run and the excellent set by Kevin Smith.

Jim, I'm also a numbers/spreadsheet nerd, and keep track of my reading that way. It's fun to see how it changes over time... amongst others, I have a graph of how many pages I read each week starting in August 2006 and you can spot every move, every new job, and the birth of each of my kids!

Lindsey wrote: "...Jim, I'm also a numbers/spreadsheet nerd, ..."

Good to know I'm not alone. Yes, real life does interfere with reading. Do you track the types of books? I was reading an article lately about how ebooks took off, leveled out, & then declined a bit which seems to follow my own use of them. What about genres?

I Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, too. Kind of a fun, different sort of fantasy.

Well, I have 2 spreadsheets. One is just a list of titles and authors of books I read in a given year, with ratings on a 10 point scale. I start a new sheet each year.

The other is our master spreadsheet of all the books we own or have owned. It lists title, author, year published, genre, if it is part of a series and, if so, book number and title of series, format (paperback, hardcover, or ebook), if my husband and/or I have read it, and if it is still in our library or gone (for print books), and what format it is for ebooks (Kindle, Apple Books, Nook, etc).

I think I was late to the ebook party, but I often pickup discounted books as ebooks now, and Amazon First Reads. So while the majority of my reading is still print, ebooks are more prevalent for me, especially when I travel.

I rarely borrow books from friends or the library, but if I do, they show up in my annual list but not the master list. The main purpose of the master list is to avoid buying books we already own, and to not unintentionally reread books we have already read.

Jim wrote: "Do you track the types of books? I was reading an article lately about how ebooks took off, leveled out, & then declined a bit which seems to follow my own use of them. What about genres?"

I don't track format on my spreadsheets (I do have an "ebooks" category on Goodreads) but I just started tracking genre in 2019, along with gender and whether the author is a POC, mostly for awareness reasons. I made an effort a few years back to include more female authors, which has opened up my reading to some fantastic series I was inadvertently writing off. Then I was trying to finish my TBR backlog, so my reading swung back to mostly male authors again. I'm also attempting to be more open to genres outside of sff, although now I have an IRL book club that's helping... we have a rule that we read a different genre every month.

Kathi wrote: "I start a new sheet each year. The other is our master spreadsheet of all the books we own or have owned."

Same. :-) I need to update my list of owned books, as we recently moved (which kicks off a cycle of downsizing my library) and of course Christmas (which results in acquiring!).

I read a slew of ebooks in 2017... they were super convenient to read one handed while I was pumping at work. Now, most of my ebooks are checked out from the library if the print edition is not available or on a longer waitlist. The presence of a phone or ereader seems to invite interruption in a way that a physical book does not.

Jim wrote: " I was reading an article lately about how ebooks took off, leveled out, & then declined a bit which seems to follow my own use of them. ..."

I suspect its a mix of different factors here.

First off, when ebooks hit big, it was mostly because of the new shiny gadgets that came with them, such as the Nook and Kindle. Once the new shiny wore off, people lost interest.

Second, the new shiny factor had people wanting to use the new gadgets and so they at least started reading more than they did normally. After the new shiny worse off, again they lost interest and stopped reading again.

I work in an industry that has a large new shiny factor. The behavior can be fascinating to watch.

My husband and I have been building our ebook library since the mid 90s and almost never buy books in print anymore. The exceptions are books which are heavy in photographs or diagrams, mathematical equations, and similar that just don't translate as well.


I don't think I could ever do spreadsheets and similar, it makes me think too much of work. :) I honestly only shelve and rate books here because its the only way to get good recommendations out of the recommendations engine.

Since the vast majority of our library is digital, they automatically get organized due to the file system structure. They get broken out by primary genre/Author/Series. Makes browsing simple since I can narrow down based on what I'm feeling like.

I don't know how people can skim books. If I'm skimming, it means I'm not enjoying myself. And if I'm not enjoying myself, I just give up and read something different

I'm envious of having a list of all the books in the house. I've tried a couple of times, but never got far. There are several thousand & they're changing a fair amount. Also, I always want to include too much info about them. I do have a bar code scanner in hopes that I could do that, but I just haven't devoted the time. Too many other things I want to do, especially around the farm & out in the shop. If I was really squared away, I'd devote an hour a day to the project & get it done eventually. Maybe some day, but I don't even have them listed as 'owned' on GR. Ugh.

I do use GR for all my reading now & manage to keep up pretty well. At least I got that far!
:)

Random wrote: "I suspect its a mix of different factors h..."

I agree, especially with the shiny. The article mentioned that boomers were the biggest users of ebooks since text size can easily be enlarged. Other articles & my own personal experience is that I don't retain ebooks as well as print books. I quite often like to flip back in a paper book to refresh a point. That's something I've never found nearly as easy in an ebook.

Covers & the actual physical presence of a book are both things I treasure, too. The last is one reason the article gave for younger folks not using ebooks as much. They want something for all the money they've spent. That's not what I would have guessed from the comments I've read on GR, though.

Jim wrote: "Other articles & my own personal experience is that I don't retain ebooks as well as print books. I quite often like to flip back in a paper book to refresh a point. That's something I've never found nearly as easy in an ebook.."

I would have no idea why. Why would how the text is displayed ever affect how you retain what you read? I can understand the difference between text and audio because they are actually processed by different areas of the brain, but text is text. Does it matter if its on papyrus, linen, wood pulp, glowing letters on a screen, or 6 foot fiery letters floating in the air. Well ok, the last might be a bit distracting. :)

I find it actually easier to flip through a book and find something in electronic format as physical. eBooks have the big benefit of having search functions. But then, I spend a lot of my time going through electronic documents for way longer than I care to admit, so search functions are second nature to me. I get annoyed with physical print because I can't search.


I find as I'm getting older that I lean more and more towards minimalism. I get so tired of stuff, always stuff, stuff, and more stuff.

My husband and I have been slowly replacing our physical library with digital versions. About once a year one of us goes through the physical library, pull items we gotten in electronic format, box them up, stick the date on the box, and stick them on a shelf in the garage. We have a deal that if a box isn't touched for a certain amount of time, then we get rid of/donate the contents.

As for pretty covers, I have pretty covers.

Random wrote: "I would have no idea why. Why would how the text is displayed ever affect how you retain what you read? ..."

I don't either, but multiple studies have shown it is so. It's ironic since I got my first ereader specifically to read through documentation more comfortably & it seems to work fine for that. I'm the IT department for a small manufacturing company, so I read reams of docs constantly & have for decades. I'll generally skim through them on the ereader, but wind up doing detail work on the computer where I can copy the important parts into a more concise document.

Still, ereaders just aren't as friendly for me with my regular books. I'm far more comfortable flipping to the front of a paper book to look at a map than using an electronic bookmark to do the same thing. I can find a scene with a particular character much more easily too since I usually know about where it happened in a physical book. It's not something that a search function works well for most times.

I can understand getting tired of stuff & I do constantly trying to keep the dust off my real books, but they're just so pretty. One wall of my bedroom is just a big set of bookshelves that I built. The books are in alphabetical order with papers stuck in full of notes, emails with the authors, & lists of series order. Old school, but very homey. It's wonderful to wake up & look at the wall, semi dreaming of the stories they hold.

You mean studies such as this
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Which does an excellent job of going over the failures of many of the sensational studies early on.

Self reporting, inconsistent variables, inconsistent environments, distractions, familiarity with the equipment, confounding factors such as eye strain.

I honestly wouldn't take those early sensational reports as scientifically valid. There have since been too many other studies that contradict their results.

I am QA and some IT at a software company. Everything I do is on a computer screen. If I couldn't comprehend what I read on a screen, I couldn't do my job.

Random wrote: "You mean studies such as this
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Which does an excellent job of going over the failures of many of the sensational studies early on. ..."

I hadn't read that one, but I have read several others that disagree. I haven't read any of them closely enough to know if this one's claims are true. Eyestrain is one place where etext is better than paper. It's supposed to be the reason boomers like them better.

Like you, it's my job, too. I prefer paper books & get more out of them. The back reading, & annotation features just aren't as friendly in etext.

Actually its a lot more than just font size, though that can certainly be a factor. Its also about light levels and contrast.

No matter the size of the font, if you put a mid gray text on a bright white background, it is going to be difficult to read and will cause eye strain. The same goes the other way, put a darker font on a dark background and it too will cause eye strain.

Ever notice on forums when someone decides to post in a pink font and its so annoying to read? That is partially because of lack of contrast between the white background and the lighter pink text.

Then overall luminance and ambient light levels are also a factor.

Back when I was a kid I noticed that if I wanted to read out doors on a bright sunny day, I had to find a spot of shade to do it. The bright sun reflecting off the page hurt my eyes and made it difficult to read. Conversely, if I tried to read that book in a dimly lit room, that will also cause eye strain.

In the first case, you have two issues. First, overall reflected luminance coming off the page is very bright and can cause issues for people who might be sensitive. But it also greatly increases the contrast between that white page (which is reflecting most of the that bright light) and the black text, which is reflecting very little light. This can cause eye strain.

On the electronic side, instead of depending upon reflected light, we depending upon emitted light though ambient light is still a factor.

Most ereaders default to a white background with black text (high contrast) and then allow the user's to control the backlight to adjust for ambient light levels.

Like with a print book on a bright sunny day, if I have the backlight cranked and are trying to read in a dark room, it will be too bright, contrast is too high, and will cause immediate eye strain. My eyes will start watering within seconds. If I adjust for a dark room and then go into a bright area, the image is too dark, effective contrast is lowered significantly, and again you have eye strain.

I have always been light sensitive so I tend to go for a black background with lighter text. I don't do white text, the contrast is too high. Instead I set my font to a mid/light gray (slightly tinted towards yellow to make it warm). My devices use an AMOLED screen, which means the blacks stay black regardless of how the backlight it set.

In my case, the backlight effectively controls the contrast ratio between my text and the background, which allows me to compensate for ambient light levels effectively.

The result is that I never have to deal with eye strain. Now granted, it took me a few years to find the exact settings that worked best for my eyes. I literally fiddled with the font color for almost a year all by itself. My husband, while using the exact same device, has his settings quite different, and that works for him.

I just finished We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe last night in ebook form. I have 5 bookmarks, 2 notes telling me to look up more details on certain items (cherenkov radiation and tardigrade), an additional note reminding myself to go through the bibliography in more detail (I already own one of the items), and I highlighted 3 bits of text which caught my fancy.

I copy and pasted one so I could share it here.

"It follows the discovery that our world is not the only planet in the universe and that our Sun is one of many, many stars. In each case, the scale of our unimportance grows by leaps and bounds."

I prefer epaper for my readers. No backlighting & much easier on the eyes, but still quite legible. It's also great for battery life. It pretty much only uses its power to draw the screen once.

I like the "best of of 2019" lists! Here's mine:

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons
Senlin Ascends (and the rest of the Babel series) by Josiah Bancroft
The True Queen by Zen Cho
The Raven Tower by Ann Lecki
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
Circe by Madeline Miller
Sorcerer's Legacy by Janny Wurts
The Long Price Quartet, by Daniel Abraham
A Late Night in Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K. L. Parker
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury
The Postman by David Brin
The Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

Out of genre:
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel
The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Jim wrote: "I'm envious of having a list of all the books in the house. I've tried a couple of times, but never got far. There are several thousand & they're changing a fair amount. Also, I always want to incl..."

I use LibraryThing (www.librarything.com) to catalog my books. It has a bar code scanner for newer books; for older books, you can manually enter an ISBN code (without the dashes), or look up the book by name or author to see if someone else has already catalogued it. And I can access it on the web, or from an app on my iPhone or iPad. I'm not sure of the current terms; it's free for a small collection, or a small lifetime fee for larger.

About a third of my physical collection is speculative fiction. I specifically collect Hugo and Nebula winners, but also works that complete those series, and then just works that I like a lot. I even have a "Wishlist" collection in LibraryThing so that, as I visit used book stores, I can avoid double purchases.

Chris wrote: "I use LibraryThing (www.librarything.com) to catalog my books. It has a bar code scanner for newer books; for older books, you can manually enter an ISBN code ..."

Now you're getting me fired up to do this. I hadn't known that about LibraryThing. Thanks. I might try it. I knew they could import GR books & GR just requires an ISBN in a csv, but I hadn't wanted to try that since it could mess up my existing books. Not a problem with LT, though.

I bought a lifetime membership with LT a decade or so ago. There were some rough times here on GR that made me want an alternative, but I just didn't care for it as much. It's not as intuitive for me. Still, it might be a good way to get my books into order & then I could export them & match them against my GR export, so I'd know what issues to expect.